Welcome to the New Yahoo! Search
Today, we are launching an all-new Yahoo! Search experience that makes search more personally relevant. We tested the changes in August with a percentage of users, and now the new page is available to everyone. The new page is designed to help you easily find and explore the things that matter most to you. The Yahoo! Search team is delighted to demonstrate our commitment to innovate in search technology and deliver an amazing user experience.
Yahoo! has also just launched a number of major changes to our core products, which include a new Yahoo! homepage, improved Yahoo! Mail, high-quality video calling in Yahoo! Messenger, and a suite of new Yahoo! Mobile experiences. The new Yahoo! Search page design aligns the experience between our new homepage, mail, and the search results page. This delivers a dynamic, compelling, and integrated experience that better understands what you are looking for so you can get things done quickly on the Web.
Most importantly, we designed this new page framework so that we can introduce and experiment with new search applications and features faster than before. Today’s launch is just the beginning of innovations to come.
Key highlights:
- Intelligent Search Results – Allows you to explore results from key sites and narrow results using different types of SearchMonkey structured data. Over the past few months, even more enhanced results for product, local, entertainment, reference, social, and tech sites have been displayed automatically. With the new search page design, we have made it easier to see these riche results from an increasing number of sites.
- Feature-Rich Experience – Provides quick access to search features that make people’s online lives safer and easier, including Search Scan/SafeSearch (which helps protect you from viruses, spyware, and spam while you search) and Search Pad. Now it will be even easier to return to the research documents you have created while searching.
- Search Assist Expansion – With the new design, our powerful query assistance is still available directly below the search box, but we’ve also incorporated it into the left-hand column for quick access lower on the page, even when the Search Assist layer is hidden. You can use this column to easily explore and discover concepts related to your query. We have added Search Assist to the search box on every Yahoo! page in the U.S. with the launch of a new universal header.
Today we are also revamping our image search and video search results pages to present a consistent user experience. In the left-hand column on the image search results page, users can find an extension of the travel refiners that we introduced back in July, as well as celebrity and entertainment categories. When you search for celebs like “Matt Damon” or “Tina Fey,” Yahoo! Image Search will tap into the “web of objects” and present related people, movies, and TV shows in their appropriate categories.
Now, here’s the best part: Rather than building this new experience on top of our existing front-end technology, our talented engineering and design teams rebuilt much of the foundational markup/CSS/JavaScript for the SRP design and core functionality completely from scratch. This allowed us to get rid of old cruft and take advantage of quite a few new techniques and best practices, reducing core page weight and render complexity in the process.
Key points about performance:
- Improved total page load time – Even though the new design includes dozens of additional assistance features and graphical assets, we are seeing faster page loading time and significant speed improvements.
- Improved perceived load time – In addition to reducing the weight of the page, we also greatly reduced the perceived load time by sending the page in three semantically meaningful chunks: first the search box and page header, then the rest of the visible content, and finally JavaScript for rich behavior.
- Inline data URI images – We’re taking advantage of specialized techniques for modern browsers such as inline data URI images, which we use to generate our subtle repeating gradients. This improves perceived and real performance dramatically. For legacy browsers, we provide the same gradients with traditional image sprites.
What does this all mean for you? Quite simply, the new search page is faster because it was built with performance in mind from the start.
We’re thrilled to put the all-new Yahoo! Search results page in your hands today in the U.S., U.K., France, Spain, Mexico, and India. You can learn more by checking out a tour that explains all of the features of this new experience. Please let us know what you think in the comments section below. Over the coming months, we will continue to deliver even more enhancements to this new experience, so be sure to check in often to see what we’re up to!
Larry Cornett
Vice President, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search
I am completely addicted to whole new image search experience. Excellent work guys.
Is this using Microsoft Bing technology – or does that come later?
It looks exacly like Googles UI with your logo.
Way to seperate yourselves.
Well when I can make money with it, like Google ad sense, albeit I have not had much success but why do you think people use it, all there ad’s are on it and they are setting up there money making blogs,websites, and whatever.
I’ve got the same question as Coxy. Is this revamped search using Bing’s technology? I thought Yahoo! was giving up in the search world?
Either way, the new search interface definitely looks good. Nice job.
how do I get rid of this horrid mess? my screen is now cluttered with useless garbage. Sorry, don’t like it. I’ve gone to preferences and killed everything possible. Even though Wikipedia and others were removed from the preferences, everything still comes back. Please tell me how I can get rid of this and go back to have a full screen of search results.
Hey, thanks everyone for your comments, and especially to folks who have tried the new experience and capabilities. To respond to a few questions from the others…
1) The design is *not* based on Google, it is designed to line up with the new Yahoo Front Page. Also it does quite a few things that competitors can not do — extensive presentation of structured data, object pivoting, fully integrated note-taking, full song playback, etc.
2) Nothing is based on Bing technology (for those that follow business press, you know that the deal still must progress through regulatory approval).
3) Yahoo will absolutely continue to innovate in Search, and these moves are a further expression of pioneering work we’ve done in structured data, assistance, multimedia, and our experience system. To the folks that are digging it, don’t worry, there’s a lot more to come!
Is there anyway to change or opt out of this new yahoo search layout?
I really dont like it..
yeah..keep it simple
The Share feature is a bit confusing on the Searchpad. When I clicked on Twitter, I was hoping to share what I found on a search term with my twitter friends. It took me to twitter all right, but just stopped there. Sounds like I need to cut/paste the link on to my twitter feed. Also, it would be great if the URL is automatically shortened.
Thanks for the response, Mike Templeton.
I quite like the new layout – not sure about two things: the fixed width (really?!) of results pages and the ’sources’ filter on the left column. I would’ve expected to see ‘result clusters’ instead of a source filter (ie, a search for ‘Microsoft Zune’ would show ‘Microsoft Zune Reviews’ ‘Microsoft Zune Specifications’ ‘Microsoft Zune Prices’ – the sort of stuff that Search Suggestion would list). Take a look at the results page on clusty.com and then imagine it better presented.
I’d also like to be able to get rid of the left hand navigation area, it’s a waste of screen space to me.
I don’t like it either and think people should be given a choice whether to keep old layout or not. I hate when corporate gets this great idea and go and ruin it for others.
HATE IT!!! I WANT TO OPT OUT!!!
That is great improvement. But I am wondering whether this changes in compliance with Yahoo – Bing deal?
This really sucks. I want the left-hand side of the page to be search results, not junk. This new “feature” makes me want to switch to something else.
First at all, I am a user of yahoo for more than 12 years and use (and have used) many of the services offered by the company (free and paid services as well, with my personal account). Since the introduction of the new yahoo search a couple of years ago, I couldn’t be more satisfied with the experience even more with the AJAX/Search Monkey enabled search page.
BUT, with the introduction of this new layout (and the association with Microsoft) I find this things very irritating that are effectively preventing me of further consider yahoo search for my very demanding search needs:
-UI Layout is delivered with a fixed width that effectively presents a more cluttered results page as the reduced horizontal space makes it for a tighter presentation. More when sponsored results are shown. This is the main Problem, If I want to use the whole available width for showing the results (so it looks more pleasantly spacious) then I should be able. fixed width is a huge drarback in the presentation! I’m changing back to google (that I don’t like much, it looks outdated) because of this.
-SearchMonkey. Until recently searchmonkey allowed you to preview more detailed information about the results without having to render a new page. The new enhanced results work as Filters, which can be valuable but it’s a totally different feature respect what it was being offered. Then as far as I’m concerned, Search Monkey was killed (that I hugely liked it) and a new filtering feature was introduced (that I find it not so necessary as I have a dozen of search engines in my firefox when I want to go directly to wikipedia, streetfire, amazon or whatever). Then to me this is another thing to be fixed.
-The options for enhanced results just add to the clutter. try “Rome” as search subject; You will see option for enhanced results like: jim… ancient… …airport map of … …weather
You see? what are those points (…) doing in the search results? Is it there enough space in the tiny column at the left for those options ? (by the way those irrelevant options should be in the search assist not on the page adding to the clutter.
-The searchpad tool. it is a very immature/unnecessary tool.
The Good is the new image search results layout.
I really hope the highly qualified yahoo search team take note on this, as I have highly regarded yahoo for my technical/engineering, traveling, general search needs, but I’m sincerely dropping it (fix the current development or adding an option to go to “classic yahoo search” in the mean time would be good) )
Great feedback from all. To address some folks questions, no, we don’t have a toggle to go back to the old experience, but we’re definitely interested in what you enjoyed about the old experience that you’d like to see carry forward. With regards to fixed layout, newspapers discovered a long time ago that reading goes faster when articles are displayed as narrow columns, and we’ve run pretty extensive eye-tracking analysis on the new layout. For those who don’t find anything in the left area useful you might try a query like “the simpsons” and click the “hulu” refiner, or “olympus c8080″ and click the “amazon” refiner. That said, we are very actively working on new ideas and improvements to that area of the page and welcome your feedback on what you’d like to see!
In response to Tom Chi (yahoo blog moderator?)
ok, my previous post hasn’t been “moderated” yet, But The moderators had enough time to discover that going tiny column is the new web paradigm design, yes, tighter is better they say, that’s why nearly every pc/tv screen is now widescreen format. Read an IEEE paper in a 2-4 column layer and it is great, read a IEEE standard that is not “whole page” format and you will enter a nightmare.
Search Engine results should be in a as wide as the user wants it format, period; Because the user is looking for something specific in a bunch of general results so “clutter-free” (global impression) is the real paradigm design. Fixed width is nothing to do with state of the art “this is how the newspapers do it, narrow” is to do with technical limitations, but you usually run into these technical limitations when there is plenty of media (flash objects, dynamic objects) but here is just text so no reason for imposing such restrictions (by the way at yahoo they’re great at AJAX coding (people say) so even with a bunch of media there shouldn’t be width restrictions )
Can we please have an opt-out option for people like me who really dislike the new page? A page with fixed width, wasted space on the left with useless buttons, and ad clutter are going to turn me into a google user very soon. The new ad campaign is about letting me do whatever I want with Yahoo, right? So let me resize the page to whatever I want. Do not decide for me. I know what is best for me, not you.
I’ve gone to google for my search needs now – this whole ‘new’ yahoo mess is just that a mess – all I want is on the page is the search, not everything to the left and right – I would stay with yahoo if I can opt out of all the garbage on the page – so now google is the search engine that has my homepage and search functions – sad cause yahoo USED TO get the job done
I dont’t know why Yahoo! users don’t like the new layout !
May be we have to keep it in Experimental mode like with Yahoo! alpha ;)
But I like the way you are displaying Search Monkey applications :)
“Great feedback from all. To address some folks questions, no, we don’t have a toggle to go back to the old experience, but we’re definitely interested in what you enjoyed about the old experience that you’d like to see carry forward.”
Tally the votes. only a few want their screens cluttered with unrequested nonsense. I’m gone from Yahoo as homepage, as are many others.
Most decent portals allow the USER, not some moron in marketing, to decide what they like.
Gee, a “don’t show new left hand column” checkbox is probably too high-tech.
The mouse over pop up for the sections on the left get annoying after a while. Other than that it’s looking good.
Yahoo search has really improved. I now rely on that. Not a fan of google anymore.
do we really have to login in order to change the links order or choice for the favorites on the left? couldn’t you “store” it on my computer directly? would be much more efficient, and more people would come back to your site, as it would not compell anyone to apply to Yahoo first.
if people are coming back, being happy about the site, they will be more likely to get an account after a while with you.
better yahoo thinks new way to beat google.
yahoo should stress about SERP quality. i observe that google SERP more relevant compared to yahoo and bing.
Love it! Finally Yahoo search is taking on to Google! Hopefully Y search will provide better results than before! The Yahoo image search I have tested and is better than before with relevant search results!
Good work Guys!
I think the new Yahoo look and feel is simple and easier to navigate without the clutter of the old Yahoo homepage. It also seems to load a bit faster. Overall, great job!
I like it! keep it simple.
Looks alot better to me, everything is clearer to the user. Lets see how it progresses :)
I like the new design.. looks simple and clean.. Hopefully SERPs will continue being more relevant in the future. Keep up the good work!
I like it & will be google killer.
I could probably live with the new page – but why has the really easy to use news section ‘news’ ‘Sport’ and ‘Entertainment’ been replaced with it all jumbled up together? I will really miss that.
Well..everysearchmachine can look like others…
This is not a point to say that its bullshit. I think Yahoo is a cool searchmachine!!! Everyone need to check it out themself. Thanks
Hi. Plz help site to index all pages. Here 1 page index in 4 or 5 days. I have thousand of pages. Help my site to increase crawl rate. Plz not worry about bandwidth. I will manage. Plz yahoo help me.
Is there option in site explorer to increase site crawl rate. That may be solve problem.
Great information regarding the seach engine. That’s what important for the small business owners that really need to be moticed on the web. SEO also needed this too.
Great
It may take a while for the crawler to reach the pages of your website. Thats fine
The \New Yahoo\ is a, for lack of a better word, mess! It is basic human nature when you become accustom to and comfortable with something to dislike it being changed. Also, leave the email format, which I pay extra for, alone as well. Not every Yahoo user is eighteen years old and needs their home page navigated for them like they’re on a ride at Disneyland. If the option ability to retain the the \Old Yahoo Format\ is not offered you can kiss me as well as many others goodbye.
I understand @cristina but i wait since 2 month. Only 1 page submitted. Is yahoo crawler unable to crawl? I see in site explorer of google crawl well. But i mostly use yahoo search. So always see my pages too. I want 1 change from yahoo search that you put search box above and make category search in bottom. I feel difficult when use yahoo search from mobile. And 1 thing please yahoo make page select in horizontal. I most feel difficult to always down the nagivation bar. Thanks
Nice profile of the new Search stuff, I’m loving the new Image results integration.
i think yahoo is the best search engine.I am wondering whether this changes in compliance with Yahoo – Bing deal?
hey you guys are using rippoffreport.com as one of the filters,
the website that has so many cases pending against them is given importance by Yahoo, this is just unbelievable
Just don’t get rid of the yahoo classic page option. Its not broken so don’t fix it with that mess of a new page and force everyone to go elsewhere. The classic page is fine the way it is.
Liking the new Yahoo search. I’ve tried the image search and find the results a lot more category precise. At last yahoo should be able to take on the Google.
Nice work !!
dislike the new page. Every time I am reading it over it pops something open. Hate it
Despise…despise…despise the new homepage. With a passion. I see all over the web that I am not alone in this. I’ve now completely abandoned Yahoo for search purposes, news, weather, shopping, everything that I once used it for, for many years.
I now have my homepage set to Google and use it for everything, just to avoid even having to LOOK at the new homepage, that is how much I hate it. I’ve got my mail set to bookmarks, to avoid going to the homepage and will soon be switching to Gmail now that I have absolutely no use for Yahoo.
A toggle feature for those of us who were quite happy with Yahoo would have been nice. Way to completely ruin a longtime, positive experience with Yahoo and send old-time loyal consumers to a new site!
I love Yahoo! But I don’t know how to submit my Blogs to Yahoo Search Engine or Directory. Can anyone help me?